Unfortunately there isn't a magic number of Spirit that you can shoot for before you start going for Intellect. Theres a lot of variability to it based on what exactly it is you're healing and how you're healing it. I would personally say that if you feel comfortable with your Mana regen for the content you're doing, you can start changing your set up to pick up more Intellect. I started switching gems around when I hit 12k Spirit and ended up dropping to about 9.5k to pick up more Intellect and my regen still felt fine, but my spells were hitting a lot harder.

I'm sorry for the very round about answer with no real numbers to support it, but there really just isn't a single answer or theorycrafting to simply say, "Have X Spirit them aim for Int."

Unfortunately there isn't a magic number of Spirit that you can shoot for before you start going for Intellect. Theres a lot of variability to it based on what exactly it is you're healing and how you're healing it. I would personally say that if you feel comfortable with your Mana regen for the content you're doing, you can start changing your set up to pick up more Intellect. I started switching gems around when I hit 12k Spirit and ended up dropping to about 9.5k to pick up more Intellect and my regen still felt fine, but my spells were hitting a lot harder.

I'm sorry for the very round about answer with no real numbers to support it, but there really just isn't a single answer or theorycrafting to simply say, "Have X Spirit them aim for Int."

thx for answering the question but how did you reach that amount of spirit?

I think the biggest difference between WoG usage and EF usage is that in some situations you'll be throwing out lots of 1HP EF's to get hots rolling on the raid, whereas with WoG you'll almost always want to be building up to 3HP or more before use. It's important to keep in mind that you still can and should use EF in any situation where you would normally use WoG, aka 3HP EF on a tank that just took a hit to bring him up out of danger zone. EF just has the flexibility to be used in more ways than WoG.

---------- Post added 2012-10-22 at 06:22 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Pacer

Graph is wrong, Lights Hammer is not affected by haste.

Stay of Execution isn't either afaik, but you can just ignore those two spells, all the other breakpoints should be accurate.

Thanks so much for posting this! I had a link to a full graph a while ago, but it broke and I wasnt smart enough to screenshot it before that >.<

Originally Posted by Loonija

thx for answering the question but how did you reach that amount of spirit?

have 9k spirit 12,3k int and 17,5k spellpower in 474 gear

My gear is at a 476 average iLV. This is a link to my toon so you can compare it to what you're running.

Originally Posted by Uniqed

Quick question, during the first raid weeks i have used SS. Im planing to try EF this week.
My question is should EF completely replace WoG or is WoG still better then EF in some situations?

EF replaces WoG when you talent into it, so if you're running EF as a talent your spell choice will be between EF and LoD.
As Pasture and Elovan said, it has a lot of different uses and scenarios in which I would definitely pick EF over SS. Take Garajal for example: I take EF for this fight and try to keep a 3 HP EF on the tank and each person with a Voodoo doll on them. This usually works wonders at stabilizing the damage that everyone is taking.

It also comes down to group composition as well though. Say if you're running with a Resto Druid and a Shaman with glyphed Riptide, having you toss an EF blanket over the raid is most likely just going to overlap with the healing your partners are already doing.

You could just try to buy the PVP helm by doing BG's or doing Justice->Honor conversions. http://www.wowhead.com/item=84431 It doesn't have spirit, but it has a meta socket and could tide you over till you get better.

Haste becomes better when mana isn't an issue, I don't think the math shows that mastery is superior in throughput to haste, merely that its close, and doesn't increase mana consumption, so its superior.

Just a quick question since i've been playing around abit with talents and such but haven't got to test this yet. But wouldn't Divine Purpose be amazing with EF and especially if you are EF blanketing? Seeing as it should be able to proc on 1 hp EF's the 25% will occur more often then if you are only using 3 hp abilities, making it a very viable talent paired with EF. Personally I don't like passive bonuses but when looking at it now it just seems amazing, especially when it can procc of itself also. Anyone who got to test this?

I just switched to Divine Purpose from Holy Avenger to play with and if you chain a bunch during a bursty damage period it's pretty amazing to throw a ton of EF around, otoh... if it's bursty damage and you get nothing then output is poop. I think for really predictable damage phases like Elegon or Will of the Emperor, Holy Avenger will be preferable but for something like Stone Guard where there's just always damage flying around Divine Purpose is going to be better since you'll never waste the 3pt heal, someone can always use it. I looked at alot of top pally parses and I see mixed use of those two abilities so I'm not sure that one or the other is strictly better but one may suit your play better.

Lucy has it perfectly for the uses of both talents (HA & DP). If damage is random and consistent (that combination of terms makes no sense but bear with it), like Jade Shards, then having DP is as strong a choice as HA in my opinion. HA is much more suited to controlled periods of burst damage, while DP (as long as you're not entirely unlucky) comes up randomly through an encounter. Consistent damage is also where EF shines, so the two can work very well together.

As far as them being amazing together, I'm not sure that it makes a huge difference one way or the other. If you are EF blanketing and toss out 30 1 HP spells, you are rolling the dice 30 times but should only have a (1/3 * 25)% chance of getting an initial DP proc. The alternative would be to toss out 10 3 HP spells and get the full 25% chance of getting an initial proc.

You should probably rephrase that. EF is the initial WoG heal, plus a hot. You never need to 'replace' WoG per se. WoG will never be 'better' than EF since it is just EF minus the hot portion.

But yes, you will use the spells for different purposes. WoG is really a spot heal / tank heal. EF is more of a stabilising heal.

Afaik EF's initial heal is stronger than WoG.

---------- Post added 2012-10-26 at 01:54 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Kerfax

Lucy has it perfectly for the uses of both talents (HA & DP). If damage is random and consistent (that combination of terms makes no sense but bear with it), like Jade Shards, then having DP is as strong a choice as HA in my opinion. HA is much more suited to controlled periods of burst damage, while DP (as long as you're not entirely unlucky) comes up randomly through an encounter. Consistent damage is also where EF shines, so the two can work very well together.

As far as them being amazing together, I'm not sure that it makes a huge difference one way or the other. If you are EF blanketing and toss out 30 1 HP spells, you are rolling the dice 30 times but should only have a (1/3 * 25)% chance of getting an initial DP proc. The alternative would be to toss out 10 3 HP spells and get the full 25% chance of getting an initial proc.

I have already posted about how 1hp ef's are a niche that other healing classes perform much better.

Just a quick follow-up on the DP/HA debate. I just ran an LFR with some friends and LFR being what it is, Elegon was a mess. Went into P3 with 40% health and only two other healers actually healing one of whom I was in vent with and was dead oom not very long after the phase started. I got a really lucky string of DP procs that allowed me to pretty much spam free LoD and... well... http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/9...?s=4752&e=4907

I got lucky, no doubt about it, but I guarantee it saved a wipe. Not something I want to count on during progression, but fun anyway

My raid recently decided to have the Holy priest go disc, how does this effect my mastery? I was curious...this is the first expansion I have played a Holy Paladin..and this guide has helped me tremendously! So I want to thank you for putting the time and effort into writing this! I just was really wanting to know if having a disc priest is going to be counter productive.

I have already posted about how 1hp ef's are a niche that other healing classes perform much better.

Also divine purpose procs are almost never wasted.

I know there's been discussion on this elsewhere. I just wanted to answer all facets of the question as well as I could

I don't think DP procs are ever wasted, but they definitely can come up at periods where they aren't as useful.

Originally Posted by Brackit

My raid recently decided to have the Holy priest go disc, how does this effect my mastery? I was curious...this is the first expansion I have played a Holy Paladin..and this guide has helped me tremendously! So I want to thank you for putting the time and effort into writing this! I just was really wanting to know if having a disc priest is going to be counter productive.

I do not believe that having a discipline priest present will affect your mastery too much. As long as enough damage is going out, both sets of absorbs should be used up. The only place where issues would arise if is there isn't enough damage to eat up both your absorbs.
I'm not 100% on what effect this will actually have though. If anyone else has solid info maybe they can chime in to answer.

I do not believe that having a discipline priest present will affect your mastery too much. As long as enough damage is going out, both sets of absorbs should be used up. The only place where issues would arise if is there isn't enough damage to eat up both your absorbs.
I'm not 100% on what effect this will actually have though. If anyone else has solid info maybe they can chime in to answer.

I'm at least 90% sure that the absorb system works based on a time left system, so if anything the disc priest would have the problems for the most part, but if there's not enough damage rolling to pop both shields, then you probably don't have to worry too much anyway.

As far as them being amazing together, I'm not sure that it makes a huge difference one way or the other. If you are EF blanketing and toss out 30 1 HP spells, you are rolling the dice 30 times but should only have a (1/3 * 25)% chance of getting an initial DP proc. The alternative would be to toss out 10 3 HP spells and get the full 25% chance of getting an initial proc.

Ah, I thought it had the 25% even if it is 1HP or 3HP. But thinking about it just makes me feel dumb, it would be quite OP

Tested EF out with DP yesterday on the first five bosses in MSV 10m normal. And I must say that even though DP proccs are uncontrollable, it never got wasted. Personally I hated that I couldn't choose when to get the effect for those really bursty moments when you need an extra cooldown. Even though my healing output was overall abit better I will still stay with HA. It was quite fun though to get 7 proccs after each other doing crazy burst healing (especially when it was on Elegon when the whole raid took loads of dmg) or when you get three in a row succesfully putting out 3 HP EF in rapid succession on all the voodo dolled targets.